Ed Cyzewski's Blog

A few years ago, I passed through an extremely difficult season of conflict that involved reporting pastoral misconduct at our church. My own part involved trying to help our priest regain trust after we uncovered several instances of dishonesty. I wasn’t prepared for how quickly everything unraveled as we uncovered additional dishonesty, and things got really bad, really fast.

I have a lot of distance from that season of my life and have the benefits of time and healing to help me look back with a more analytical eye.

The writer in me can’t help thinking that I don’t want to have gone through all of that just to get through it. I hope that I can share a few things that will help others as well.

Some of the lessons are simple, if not a bit blunt. For instance, a dishonest, manipulative person in a position of authority gets ONE chance to come clean. After that one chance, do everything you can within the rules of your church to expose the dishonesty and take immediate action.

Others are a bit harder to explain, and the best I can come up with is this idea of each person having a starting point for handling church conflict.

Let’s begin by hoping for the best that each person has a similar way of processing church conflict and reported misconduct.

Starting Point A is where you learn about the misconduct.

Point B is where you consider all of the reasons why it could be happening.

Point C is where you arrive at a conclusion, whether through witnessing additional misconduct or hearing enough evidence from enough people who all corroborate each other.

Point D is where you are ready to take action based on your conclusion.

Now, here is the wild card in arriving at all of these points. Your personal relationships and trust level for each person involved will determine how fast you move from one point to another.

As a person in leadership at our church, I was one of a handful of people who started off at Point A where I learned about the priest’s dishonesty. I processed explanations, gathered evidence, and witnessed more incidents at Point B, arrived at my own conclusions at Point C, and then took action at Point D where we started having meetings to address the dishonesty.

What I didn’t fully grasp is that each person in leadership and then later in the church had to go through the same process I had just gone through. They had to learn about the dishonesty, process the explanations, accumulate evidence, and then come to conclusions as well.

Those who trusted me and knew me personally still had to go through that process, but their time going through it was much shorter than those who knew the priest well and trusted him. It took a lot longer for them to process the possible explanations and come to conclusions.

When I had been at Point D for a long time, ready to take action, it was hard to see some of my closest friends still at Point B, trying to figure out possible explanations for what had happened. Didn’t they believe me?

They did, but they needed to go through the same process I had just gone through. Mind you, they went through it faster because they knew me and trusted me. Yet, they still needed time to accumulate evidence. And once they witnessed more dishonest behavior, they were immediately ready to take action as well.

Looking back, even the people who didn’t believe me and initially concluded that I was a troublemaker came around to conclusions similar to my own. They just needed more time to witness the dishonest behavior. In retrospect, I have a lot more grace and understanding for them.

Of course, church conflict and pastoral misconduct can be quite complicated and painful, so my little diagram of points A to D won’t always apply perfectly. But it does help to see how we tend to process difficult situations and how personal relationships and trust determine how fast we process a difficult situation.

Even if I understood all of that, it probably would have still hurt a lot to go through it all, but I’m certain it would have hurt a good deal less.

Ed Cyzewski

I’m the author of Flee, Be Silent, Pray: Ancient Prayers for Anxious Christians, Reconnect: Spiritual Restoration from Digital Distraction, and other books. I write about prayer and spiritual restoration at http://www.edcyzewski.com.

Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash

I started writing parody book release blog posts on each April Fool’s day to have a laugh and maybe sell a few copies of my book Coffeehouse Theology: Reflecting on God in Everyday Life.

Back then, The Shack was the big thing. We didn’t know how simple and easy those days were! I didn’t want to make fun of the book, but I did want to parody the phenomenon of The Shack’s clash of a female representation of God with the toxic masculinity that runs rampant in many conservative churches.

I may have had a certain masculine reformed pastor in mind.

So I slapped it together, got some laughs, sold a few books, and received a warm note from the author of The Shack. It could have been worse.

Over a decade later, things are now so much worse than we could have ever imagined for American evangelical Christianity and for America in general.

Just to give a sample of what’s been going on in the American evangelical tribe…

We had a worship leader pulling publicity stunts during a deadly global pandemic.

Christians are complaining that sermons on the Beatitudes are woke.

“Thought-pieces” question whether we can have too much empathy.

Even the leader of the  “New Evangelical” brand is mired in accusations of behavior that sounds a lot like the old evangelicals.

And the can of gasoline on top of this raging dumpster fire is that far too many evangelical Christians continue to support a lawless, authoritarian bully who has been credibly accused of everything evangelical leaders told us an honorable man should NOT do to a woman.

For all of the good that American evangelicals can do and continue to do in the world, we also dramatically undermine our witness for the Good News that Jesus is King by enabling someone who is as anti-Christ as anyone that Tim Lahaye could cook up.

I can’t parody evangelical Christianity in a spirit of love, fun, or even humor right now—perhaps never again. Who can?

After a year of observing trends and news, what is there to laugh about in a movement that is so tragically polluted by political entanglements and enabling some of the worst lawless bullies in modern politics?

If there is nothing left to parody in this profoundly unhealthy movement, I also lack any incentive to spend time parodying it. In the wake of the 2016 election, I had an identity crisis as an evangelical involved in Christian publishing while a massive chunk of my tribe was enthralled with someone who supports everything I reject as a follower of Jesus.

Who could I write for?

I know I’m not alone in my views, but it felt like our Christian family was being torn apart.

As I withdrew from the evangelical movement to attend a welcoming and loving Episcopal Church, I also pulled back from the Christian publishing world. I still believe in everything I wrote, but I couldn’t find a place for myself in the niche of Christian publishing.

I’m proud that Flee, Be Silent, Pray: Ancient Prayers for Anxious Christians continues to help readers find space to pray each day. I’m sad that I struggled to promote Reconnect: Spiritual Restoration from Digital Distraction during the pandemic because it’s a book that speaks to the challenges of the social media ecosystem that rewards bad behavior and divisiveness.

As I wrapped up my promotion of those projects, I couldn’t conceive a message to share with such a fragmented audience of American evangelicals. I also felt an urgent need to disconnect from the platform-obsessed publishing model that required more engagement on social media than my mental health could handle.

I have found peace in a day job that uses my researching and writing skills, while woodworking and oil pastels have become my creative outlets. I still edit and write here and there on the side.

I also wonder what we could draw from the desert fathers and mothers in this time of digital and political turmoil.

How can we remain apart from the madness of the times while still speaking prophetically and advocating for others with empathy?

Making a parody of American evangelical Christianity sure won’t help me do that. So, for now, I’m trying to figure out what will.

I’m reminded of the words of Abba Anthony: “A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him saying, ‘You are mad; you are not like us.’”

The madness has come. May God mercifully give us eyes to see our neighbors so that we can love and serve them well.

You can still check out my books if you want.

The too long, didn’t read version of this post is: Maybe.

There is no simple equivalent in America to the political scene at the time of Jesus. We have to make interpretive decisions, and the track record of the American church in politics is… well… really BAD.

Compared to the time of Jesus, we don’t (yet) have an absolute tyrant of a ruler who is worshipped as a god or who is actively exploiting our country as part of a colonial military occupation (although the plight of the American south under white supremacy’s authoritarian violence shouldn’t be overlooked).

In a broad sense, our political situation today is very different from the time of Jesus.

Political opposition to Rome at the time of Jesus was easily lumped together with revolution. Violent forms of execution, like crucifixion, took care of the political opposition.

The Roman occupation government aimed to enrich the Roman Empire and its fake god-king. Government wasn’t by the people, for the people. There were no boot-strapping Jewish shepherd boys who could rise through the Roman political ranks and one day get elected to political office to make life better for the poor farmers and fishermen.

We can try really hard to determine some kind of equivalence between the sayings of Jesus and the politics of our times, but there isn’t a simple one-to-one correspondence between the challenges of his time and our own. Even if we tried, we’d likely never stop debating it.

What were politics like for the Jewish people?

At the time of Jesus, the only options available for the average person were compromise with the pagan Roman occupying army, as a tax collector for instance, or disengagement, either by keeping your head down or relocating to the wilderness like the Essenes.

The Pharisees and Sadducees tried to chart a course of engagement and faithfulness that often led them to compromise of one sort or another.

Of course you could always try out disengagement from Rome and pair that with revolution, but that never ended well.

There wasn’t a fruitful way to have a positive influence in politics without deep compromise to a government that believed its ruler was a deity and that its armies could plunder the world for its glory. We shouldn’t be shocked that we can’t find a simple correlation to modern democracy at the time of Jesus!

What great “What if?” question of Jesus and politics

We are left asking how Jesus may have interacted if he lived in a time of representative democracy. Would he have used the tools of politics to advance his Kingdom agenda? Would he have abstained from all worldly tools altogether?

Perhaps we can at least create some common ground among fellow Christians before we get into the more challenging issues. At least, what should be common ground…

For instance, we should be able to confidently assert that God favors no one nation over another. America is not the new Israel. We may aspire to be “a” city on a hill for democracy (even if “aspire” is doing some heavy lifting), but we are not THE city on a hill.

We should also be able to assert that God does not favor one political party or movement over another. The correction to the corruption of merging Christianity with one political party isn’t to merge Christianity with an opposing political party.

That should be the easy part of discussing Christianity and politics. (NARRATOR: It’s not easy actually.)

Political parties advocate for specific policies and approaches to solving real or perceived problems. I’d say it should be hard for us to imagine Jesus adopting a partisan stance or throwing in his full support of one political party or another. Yet, I also can’t imagine Jesus being completely disengaged from the political process if his vote could count toward meaningful change that would end suffering or advance peace.

This is where we need to be careful with our bias and limitations. It’s likely that we all want Jesus to arrive at the same assessments of our times as our own.

It’s very hard to open ourselves up to the Jesus revealed in the Gospels and to let that Jesus challenge us in our present time.

Which political positions align with the values of Jesus?

We could begin by asking what Jesus cared about. Put simply, he spent a lot of time feeding and healing people while teaching about the coming Kingdom of God. Since we should all, hopefully, want the government to avoid preaching for us, let’s focus on the healing and feeding part of Jesus’ ministry.

These miracles weren’t the equivalent of a parade handing out snacks and candy for fun. Jesus was feeding people who were likely very hungry and food insecure to one degree or another.

If Jesus didn’t heal people, they were stuck with suffering. Can we imagine Jesus wanting it to be harder for someone to see a doctor, to deny life-saving medical care to a child, or to see a mother needlessly die because an insurer ruled she has a pre-existing condition?

Healthcare should be part of the pro-life discussion today, but we are left to fill in the considerable gaps from the time of Jesus. There was no equivalent to a modern healthcare system at the time of Jesus. Can you imagine the Romans investing in a network of hospitals serving the people they had conquered?

If anything, we can find a few more clues in the Old Testament where the rulers of Israel and Judah met with judgment from God because they hoarded wealth, underpaid their workers, and exploited the poor. Rather than using the resources of government for the benefit of their people, they used it for themselves.

Of course, it remains extremely challenging to apply the ideas of an ancient theocracy to a modern democracy, but some patterns emerge. When God could have instructed the kings of Israel and Judah to rule as they pleased, to keep taxes as low as possible, and to let private charities help the poor, we find quite the opposite. A righteous ruler is just, attentive to the needs of the people, and takes action to ensure equity and prosperity.

By the same token, we have to do some interpretative work to arrive at a Christian belief in creation care—not hard work, mind. This shouldn’t be a difficult position for Christians to adopt by connecting a few dots.

Clean drinking water, clean air to breathe, and preventing warming trends that cause severe weather events should be VERY easy positions for anyone to support, regardless of their faith. Political leaders and parties can be challenged to work toward caring for the environment without creating a conflict between “affordable energy” and mitigating climate change or keeping water clean.

We can’t make a one-to-one correspondence with the politics of Jesus and our own times, but we can at least see why this is such a challenging task. At the very least, there is an Old Testament precedent for using government to benefit the people, especially those who have the least, and to ensure justice.

When Jesus didn’t have viable political tools as his disposal, he at least took concrete steps to care for the material needs of others through healing and feeding them. If we have the means to ensure others are healthy and well-fed through the tool of a government created for the people and by the people, I can’t imagine passing up such an opportunity.

We shouldn’t need specific commands to discern in good faith what matters to God. We don’t need God to command us, “Thou shalt make sure everyone has clean drinking water.” If one political party is negligent when it comes to pollution or installing new water pipes, aren’t they in conflict with the most basic part of caring for our neighbors?

Do we have to talk about abortion politics? Uh… Yeah.

Arguments over a consistent pro-life ethic have become a stalemate over the years. I don’t know any Democrats who want “more” abortions to happen. They want women to be free from the government regulating their own medical decisions, and late term abortions are incredibly rare and often only to save the life of the mother.

I am sympathetic with Republicans who oppose abortion because I was once in their shoes. Arguments over when life begins ventures into the realm of science where preachers and theologians are out of their depth. If life begins at conception and 10%-20% of pregnancies end in miscarriage (80% happen within the first 10 weeks), then God has created conditions where a lot of babies are being killed.

This all fails to bring up the real fact that abortions have historically gone UP under Republican presidents and DOWN under Democrats regardless of the laws that are on the books. Is abortion politics about ACTUALLY reducing abortions or just getting certain laws passed.

With the complexity of abortion politics aside, “pro-life” encompasses more issues than abortion, and so it is absurd to call Democrats “pro-death” or baby killers. Neither party is flawless when it comes to pro-life issues. I can see where both sides come from, but I tend to be more critical of the Republican positions that I know so well from within.

Which political actions are antithetical to Jesus?

Here we have a much easier time coming up with standards that can help us judge political causes today. Bearing false witness is clearly prohibited, Satan is called the “father of lies,” so anyone who lies repeatedly, say someone who is fact-checked to have lied thousands of times on the record, does not align with the way of Jesus.

Of course “truth-telling” can be a hotly debated topic when propaganda and half-truths are fact checked. Yet, we can avoid the “all politicians lie” trope by examining who is relying on a false version of reality vs. who has occasionally bent the truth in a speech.

Bending the truth should not be tolerated, but it’s not remotely comparable to a politician who refuses to be fact-checked, lest his torrent of lies is exposed for what it is.

We could argue that honesty and character flaws matter more than anything else because it doesn’t matter what a candidate says if he/she is exposed as self-serving and dishonest. A candidate could say he’s pro-life and favors particular religious groups as long as that serves his political fortunes.

Will that person actually follow through? Could that person shift positions if there is a future advantage? He already tried to back away from the Pro-Life movement, in fact.

Vote for such a man at your own risk.

Author of Flee, Be Silent, Pray, Coffeehouse Theology, and other books.

Ed Cyzewski

After spending my formative years in the American evangelical tradition, I’ve had to face the lingering effects of what I’d call missionary guilt: never doing enough to make disciples.

Missionaries are often hailed by white evangelicals as the real heroes of the faith who have truly counted the cost, left everything behind, and done whatever it takes to follow Jesus. I would guess that many who didn’t become a missionary at least felt some missionary guilt.

Perhaps some missionaries feel missionary guilt for not being a good enough missionary!

Missionaries tend to command so much respect that I found I could often get an edge in an argument with my fellow evangelicals if I demonstrated that respected missionaries agreed with my point of view. Seeing the ministries of female missionaries also opened my eyes to the inexcusably bad arguments against women in pastoral roles.

This emphasis on missions and sharing the Gospel is tied in part with Jesus’ final words to his disciples. Matthew passed on what has become known as the Great Commission at the end of his Gospel:

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Matthew 28:18-20, NRSV

What should we do with that command from Jesus? Does it mean that we should all become missionaries and feel guilt if we don’t?

My issue isn’t whether we should listen to the words of Jesus. We should ALWAYS listen to the words of Jesus. I’m asking whether we should rethink how we have interpreted and applied these particular words of Jesus to this particular moment.

It’s clear that quite a few of Jesus’ earliest followers thought they should go preach the message of Jesus all over the world. Then again, some of Jesus’ followers also stayed put to either teach or to serve others as deacons.

Even during the great missionary expansion of early Christianity, there wasn’t a one-size-fits-all application of making disciples of all nations.

I’ve also heard quite a few preachers and commentators note that the commission from Jesus has two parts to making disciples: baptize them and then teach them. In other words, Jesus didn’t ask us to merely convert people. He asked us to participate in the longer term, deeper work of discipleship that teaches people how to obey what Jesus taught.

This all is part of my larger project to rethink what it looks like to be a Christian after I cut ties with conservative evangelicalism and joined an Episcopal Church.

What does faithfulness look like if I’m not a missionary or if I’m not driven by the evangelical emphasis on evangelizing others?

Surely my religious practice as an Episcopal Christian involves more than attending church each Sunday and voting for Democrats each election. (That’s a joke, folks!)

For me, the crux of things is that I think people are better off if I they have an awareness of God’s love and make room each day for prayer, scripture, and obedience to the teachings of Jesus.

If more people treated each other according to the example set by Jesus, our world would be a better place.

Our lives would be better if we sought meaning and purpose through love and service in humble deference to God’s will and the upside down kingdom Jesus brought to earth.

In that sense, I haven’t changed in my desire to share the good news of God’s Kingdom coming to our world through the loving ministry, death, and Resurrection of Jesus. I want others to find the love and peace that comes from God and the meaning that comes through serving others.

Yet, all of the things I have described are practices and ways of living that call for my own commitment and complete embodiment in my own life. This isn’t a message that is just “preached” to others. It’s a path of discipleship that is learned and modeled through personal commitment to the risen Lord.  

There is a place for teaching others to follow the way of Jesus, but it remains a “way of living,” not just a way of thinking.

And that brings me back to the lingering power of “missionary guilt” that is so pervasive among evangelicals and former evangelicals. At least in my own experience, my guilt originated from feeling like I was never doing enough to “tell” others about Jesus.

At this moment in history, the majority of people are aware of Jesus. They could learn all about him if they desired. For most people, and just about everyone I meet in a typical day, there is no need for a preacher to show up and teach them the story of Jesus.

The majority of people today need to see what it looks like to be transformed by the power of the Spirit and a life dedicated to following the way of Jesus. You could say that there is now a different cost for the majority of Christians who are surrounded by people who know about Jesus but may not follow him.

The majority of Christians, especially those in my own North American context, don’t need to go and tell people about Jesus, but they do need to demonstrate what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.

My own theory is that Christians in America have generally underestimated the damage done by Christians behaving badly. We don’t account for the many who have turned away from the church because we were perceived as uncaring toward the poor, racist, political partisans, cruel to immigrants, disparaging sexual identity, covering up sex abuse, blaming victims, imposing strict rules on others, and generally not caring for people more than our own theology and rules.

At a time when more people have either de-converted or said, “No thanks” when hearing about Jesus, the need isn’t for more information about our faith. Our message has been undermined by the conduct people have witnessed.

Whether their conclusions are fair or not, our calling is to go deeper into the way of discipleship, experiencing what it means for God to love us and how we may respond with love. Our hope today at a time of deconversion and disinterest is to show what it could look like to be shaped the presence of Jesus, the risen Lord who conquered death and evil.

Instead of worrying if we’ve done enough or measured up like a missionary “sold out” for Jesus, we can turn our gaze toward Jesus and ask where he may be leading us today.

Where is Jesus going? Where is he inviting us to meet him? Who is with him? How can we help?

Those are the kinds of questions that can help us replace our missionary guilt with discipleship hope. We have hope in the way of Jesus, and we trust that he will never leave or forsake us.

Jesus has called us to follow him, and if we ask him to show us the way forward, he will show us in one way or another. The way may not be the one we expect or would choose, but I’d wager that our commitment to the way will speak more to the de-converted or disinterested than the most forceful message a missionary could preach.

I was far from the most conservative student at my nondenominational evangelical seminary.

Yet, I hit a point where I realized that my faith would crumble if I remained rooted in a conservative theological system that emphasized the boundary markers of knowledge, rigid morality, and a sense of duty or obligation over the life-changing power of Jesus through the Holy Spirit at the center of our faith.

Perhaps the more easy-going and fluid faith traditions on the Christian left could result in a bunch of lukewarm people who reduced their faith to punch card Christianity, but I could see the dangers on the conservative side that had a form of godliness while denying its power. It would have been all too easy to focus on theological concepts and controlling aspects of the faith that would have let me down in spectacular fashion.

I once had a pastor who often quipped about conservative Christians, “You either become a mystic or an atheist.”

It’s a hyperbole that would make plenty of conservative Christians break out in hives. They certainly don’t want to become atheists, but being mystics isn’t any great shakes for them either.

It’s easy to equate conservative Christianity with a drab Bible church presided over by an angry, sweating preacher in a cheap suit screaming about God’s judgment. We can also make the mistake of thinking Christian mystics are miserable religious fanatics sitting in a stone cell in a burlap sack as they lament their guilt and ponder the crucifixion in gory detail.

Neither of those options sounds appealing!

As quick as we are to dispel such stereotypes of conservative Christians and mystics, I have seen enough conservative Christians leave the faith because their theology and practices couldn’t sustain them. A bit of mysticism wouldn’t have hurt.

I’m in a season of life where I’m helping my kids become more aware of God so they can develop their own relationship with God. I am very much aware that I want their faith to be rooted in the mystery and presence of God in their lives that is based on God’s love and grace.

You could say it’s mysticism lite.

Although I am concerned about my kids turning their religious practice into a Sunday morning punch card system, I am perhaps more concerned about them being sucked into the rules and certainty of conservative Christianity that promises a lot of things it can’t deliver if they submit to its controlling systems that generate fear and anxiety.

This anxiety and disappointment hit me hard in my 20’s, and it hit quite a few others hard as well. In the early 2000’s, we were deconstructing, emerging, and endlessly critiquing the religious systems that promised neat and tidy religion in the face of life’s chaos and uncertainty.

I’ll be the first to admit that I wasn’t always deconstructing or critiquing in healthy ways, but they were honest and real based on what I was presented vs. what I experienced.

It’s the temptation of formulaic religion that turns our practices into an equation where doing certain things or believing certain things will lead to specific promised outcomes of peace, hope, joy, security, etc. This overlooks the unpredictable realities of life that defy simple explanations of God ordering everything in our lives to one specific purpose that ultimately brings us prosperity and peace.

Overly simple beliefs cause far more problems than they solve. At first, a seemingly airtight belief system may be extremely appealing, but over time, it can’t hold up in the daily grind of life and the highs and lows that can shake one’s faith loose.

Anyone can practice the simple spirituality of the Christian faith, but it’s not possible to easily explain the complexities of life or the mysteries of God. When we run into mystery, we can’t fill in the gaping voids of life with platitudes we could carve into a hunk of wood or paint onto a coaster.

I am sure there are many paths to atheism, but the one I am most familiar with is from the fragile certainty of airtight Christian conservatism to the seeming exhale of becoming an atheist. Curiously, some are able to become atheists with a sigh of relief that they are free from a life-sucking religious system. Others adopt a kind of fundamentalist/evangelical style atheism that is sure of itself and eager to convert others.

Whatever shape one’s atheism takes, I’ve seen enough of people getting crushed by rules, judgment, fear, and power struggles in the conservative end of American Christianity (most likely white American Christianity), to know we have a problem on our hands.

Our seeming strength of conviction and doctrinal rigidity often attempts to overcompensate for our barren branches that could be nourished by the vine and carry the fruits of the Spirit. Christians have Jesus at the center as our vine that sustains us, but we lose sight of our source of life when we turn our primary attention to maintaining boundaries like doctrinal particulars.

If Jesus is the center and we focus on him, then we will find new life and renewal that we can share with others. If our time is consumed by maintaining the rigid particulars that make up the boundaries of conservative Christianity, we’ll soon become exhausted by its combative, defensive siege mentality where a fragile faith cannot stand without our vigilance.

The vine and the branches is reduced to a theological concept, rather than a life-giving lesson from Jesus.

There are many other paths toward losing one’s faith, but I worry the most about this one because it is not understood by those most likely to go down it.

I imagine someone tuning a guitar by tightening the strings over and over again. No matter high the notes go, the solution is to turn the knobs tighter. It’s true that strings may need to be tightened sometimes, but there are moments when tension must be loosened as well.

At a certain point, people who are turned tighter and tighter with rigid doctrines are going to snap. When they do, the conservatives around them will often say, “They only snapped because they weren’t rigid enough!”

And so, they become more rigid once again, until another person snaps.

Ed Cyzewski

I’m the author of Flee, Be Silent, Pray: Ancient Prayers for Anxious Christians, Reconnect: Spiritual Restoration from Digital Distraction, and other books. I write about prayer and spiritual restoration at http://www.edcyzewski.com.

If we reflect on what it could mean for Jesus to be the “bread of life,” it may help to try an exercise of opposites. 

What does it mean if Jesus isn’t my bread of life? 

Do I rely on other things as my bread? If so, then what are those things? 

Perhaps something as vague as “control over life circumstances” or “my own wisdom” could be the “bread” that I rely on to sustain my life. We could say things like entertainment, distraction, power, position, or productivity at work. Perhaps politics have become the “bread” of life for some Christians. 

If bread is something we rely on to sustain us in some way (mentally, spiritually, etc.), then our choice of bread is going to impact what we do, how we feel, and how sustainable life may seem. Bread is the essential thing that we can’t imagine skipping on a day to day basis. 

If the bread is removed, then everything else grinds to a halt. Without the energy and life provided by the bread, nothing else seems possible. 

Whether we think of Jesus as the bread we need to sustain us day in, day out, or a vine that provides continuous life from the soil, the message is one of dependence. If we hope to have the kind of life that Jesus came to give us and promised us, then we need to make space each day to receive him in the same way we make time to eat bread. 

There is something very simple about eating bread. Even a child as small as a one-year-old can figure it out. Perhaps I’m reading too much into things, but our spiritual practices can also follow along with this simplicity. 

Silent centering prayer is about as simple as it gets for a spiritual practice. Just remain still, let go of your thoughts, and center on a word or phrase that helps draw your attention back to God. That isn’t to say that centering prayer is “easy.” 

It’s not necessarily easy to pray at a time with so many distractions and disruptions. But it can be simple. And if we practice something simple long enough, then we can hope that it will eventually become easy. 

The same can be said for basic meditations on scripture that teach us to read slowly, to pause for reflection, to wonder, to ask questions about the passage, and to imagine ourselves even in the story. Simply imagining ourselves in the crowd with Jesus may seem even childlike in its simplicity, which is the point of it. 

Bread and grape vines are simple. Jesus meant for our spiritual life to depend on such simple things that are already within our reach. 

We can receive Jesus each day as our “bread” of life, even if we aren’t quite sure how exactly he sustains us and gives us “life.” By making space for him daily, we can begin to share in the life-changing mystery that Jesus offers us. 

Ed Cyzewski

I’m the author of Flee, Be Silent, Pray: Ancient Prayers for Anxious Christians, Reconnect: Spiritual Restoration from Digital Distraction, and other books. I write about prayer and spiritual restoration at http://www.edcyzewski.com.

Happy April 1st! It’s time to announce my latest book release:

Anyone can write a book these days about marriage and dating relationships, and that’s why my latest book collects the reliable, anecdote-based wisdom of the most trustworthy relationship experts in the church today: Pastors with Large Churches (PLCs). My latest release is a collection of their BEST biblical wisdom:

Relationship Advice from Pastors with Large Churches

Pastors with large churches have training in the time tested ancient relationship teachings from the Old and New Testaments that makes them far more reliable than “experts” with secular PhD’s.

And don’t sleep on pastors who have a counseling elective piled on with their Master of Divinity degrees! Who knows WHAT PLCs can share with couples based on that, let alone how much more expertise they’ve gained when giving relationship advice!

Add in the incredible anecdotes gained from a relationship of their own, whether that’s courting, dating, engagement, marriage, or a really great endorsement from a popular preacher, and you’ve got a pile of personal stories ready to be applied far and wide. That’s incredible expertise when paired with tried and true biblical relationship advice dating back to the tribes of Israel and the early church!

Names and fashion may have changed over millennia, but the expertise of a PLC with a smoking hot wife hasn’t.

We trust these PLCs to apply the Bible on Sunday mornings. When they preach on a passage that addresses relationships, we’re more than ready to trust what they say from the pulpit.

In ministry, size is everything. If their church is bigger than yours, why not trust their relationship advice in print as well?

Order Relationship Advice from Pastors with Large Churches

Real Books by Ed Cyzewski

Ed Cyzewski

I’m the author of Flee, Be Silent, Pray: Ancient Prayers for Anxious Christians, Reconnect: Spiritual Restoration from Digital Distraction, and other books. I write about prayer and spiritual restoration at http://www.edcyzewski.com.

While I was working as a freelance editor primarily for Christian clients, a pastor set up a meeting to discuss his book project idea. He arranged a video call with several other people from his team, which was a first for me. I could see he meant business.

Most pastors, especially the male ones, come to me about publishing a book that’s based on a sermon series. The combined power of a few people patting them on the back, saying it was great, and the romanticism of publishing a book propelled them to reach out.

With that in mind, I was surprised when this pastor said he wanted to write a book on marriage. My first thought was, “Uh, oh.” My second thought was, “Well, let’s see where this goes.”

I started by asking if he had expertise in marriage counseling, such as specific training and dedicated experience in that area. He didn’t have that.

Realizing that he was not exactly enthusiastic about my question, I felt obliged to ask another question that he was even less enthusiastic about.

“Do you know an expert on marriage you could write the book with?”

The call didn’t last too much longer after that, and I never heard from him again.

I can’t blame this pastor for thinking he could write a book about marriage. The Christian system of expertise, whether in churches, publishing, or media in general, is deeply broken.

Pastors are expected to be experts on many different things, even though most of them only have a generalist Master of Divinity Degree. They can perhaps claim modest expertise when interpreting a collection of ancient documents that date back 2,000 years or more.

That’s hardly the sort of expertise called for when giving marriage advice.

And yet, pastors who are married and occasionally advise married couples based on a class or two in seminary may think that experience combined with their “authority” for interpreting the Bible makes the cut.

They presume they can apply the Bible to relationships today despite the challenges of applying ancient texts, that required head coverings for women and regulated slavery, to the modern world.  Congregations often accept anecdote driven advice based on ancient texts in sermons without batting an eye, so why would a book be any different?

In too many cases, books promoted by the Christian publishing industry aren’t any different from the anecdote-driven, suspect interpretations delivered on Sunday mornings. A pastor, who is regarded as an expert by a congregation, whether or not that is actually warranted, can slip right into the role of an expert in the publishing world provided he (it’s typically a he, at least) can demonstrate a large enough following to guarantee a good print run.

Sometimes, even this flimsy anecdote-driven expertise isn’t required if the author has a large enough platform.

Exhibit A for this would be Joshua Harris, the darling of the homeschooling movement and purity culture who wrote a wildly popular dating book without actually practicing the advice he gave in the book. The platform bestowed by conservative Christians guaranteed robust book sales, and thus no one worried about his lack of expertise or even his lack of any experience at all.

More recently, Elizabeth Elliot has been highly scrutinized for sharing dating and marriage advice while living in a controlling, emotionally abusive marriage. The tragedy of Elliot’s personal life was compounded by the ways she passed on terrible advice to women who were suffering in similar or worse relationships.

All the while, the Christian publishing and conference industry concerned itself only with her robust book and ticket sales. Did anyone pause to ask whether a former missionary with a murdered husband had the expertise required to guide young people in their dating choices, personal holiness, or marriages?

Elliot had a compelling story that was certainly worth telling, but she wasn’t an expert in dating or marriage. Yet, the Christian publishing and media industry leveraged her compelling story into a massive money-maker fueled by Elliot’s personal anecdotes and biblical interpretations.

Pastors and Christian authors can do many good things for us, but few are marriage, relationships, or dating experts. There are Christians who have dedicated themselves to these specific topics and are far more likely to give us valuable and useful advice.

These Christians with psychology or other related degrees may not have the generalist training in biblical interpretation that an MDiv provides a pastor. However, they won’t make the tragic mistake of turning their personal experiences into wider experiences for others to imitate. They can spot toxic relationship trends, real warning signs in a marriage, or healthy practices to nurture in a relationship.

Our expertise in American Christianity is often tied to position and social platform and relies heavily on anecdotes, (sometimes) a flimsy master’s degree, and (often) suspect biblical interpretations.

If I sound too harsh in calling this an expertise crisis, take note that the books by Elliot and Harris remain on sale to this day despite their expertise being shot full of holes. In American Christianity, profit and influence can fill in all the expertise a public figure lacks.

Ed Cyzewski

I’m the author of Flee, Be Silent, Pray: Ancient Prayers for Anxious Christians, Reconnect: Spiritual Restoration from Digital Distraction, and other books. I write about prayer and spiritual restoration at http://www.edcyzewski.com.

Photo by NATHAN MULLET on Unsplash

Author Rachel Held Evans rightly received standing ovations when she said, “What if the church was a place where everyone was safe but no one was comfortable?”

Heaven help you, though, if you have the nerve to do the very things that will make the church a safe, uncomfortable space.

Perhaps some have been too quick to applaud the desire for safety without realizing that oftentimes uncomfortable actions are required to make the church a safe space.

Do we want safety?

Yes!

Do we want to be uncomfortable in the church?

Absolutely not!

Do we want to make the church a safe place at the expense of our comfort?

That unfortunately sounds like a really big ask in a lot situations.

If we are serious about having safe churches, we need to have uncomfortable conversations that put relationships in uncomfortable spaces and hold leaders accountable in ways that make everyone uncomfortable.

Making the church a safe space requires learning difficult truths that we’d rather not face. We have to hear heart-breaking stories and accept that our community isn’t as safe as we assume.

Making the church a safe space could mean asking people to become more cautious and to scrutinize situations more than they may prefer.

Making the church a safe space means reassessing what we thought of certain leaders and even how we perceive ourselves. Have we been deceived by leaders and even played a role in enabling them in some ways?

If enough lay leaders or influential people in a church resist having difficult conversations, then rumors and gossip replace clear communication, wounds never heal, and trust dies.

When people fail to speak openly and honestly with each other in Christian community, then we have failed to create a safe church. A safe church MUST give people space to say, “I’ve been hurt by this behavior/situation.” And when they share that, they MUST be taken seriously regardless of who has been accused of misconduct, whether that’s a clergy member, lay leader, or member of the congregation.

Any congregation that avoids discomfort is an unsafe space. Perhaps nothing bad will happen over time, but that is only thanks to chance and not to the active practice of genuine, loving community where all are valued and cared for.

A congregation that avoids discomfort and turns away from difficult conversations will accept its members so long as they don’t rock the boat and call into question the people, such as clergy, who are more valued than they are.

The church that values comfort above difficult conversations makes certain people expendable and sets clear limits around what one must do in order to belong to the community.

The uncomfortable Christian community is willing to bear one another’s burdens, to move themselves among the unsettled, and to hear what is unwelcome. People are the precious living stones of our communities who are all beloved by God.

No one is more valuable than anyone else in a safe, uncomfortable Christian community because the length of your membership, amount you tithe, or leadership role means nothing compared to our place in God’s family as loved children.

The pursuit of a safe church means sacrificing our desire for a comfortable church. I don’t think we are capable of making such a sacrifice unless we have counted the cost of belonging to a loving community where comfort takes a back seat to the safety of everyone.

Photo by frank mckenna on Unsplash

Over the past eight months, and really the past two years, I’ve been through a difficult situation with several Christians that has pushed me to my limits. The wrongs have been subtle at times, but the accumulated impact has hurt me and plenty of others.

At this point, I won’t share the details of my experience at this time, but I need to mention it because it shut down any plans I had for writing in 2023. When an author, who is also a long-time blogger, feels unable to write, that’s worth explaining.

I’ve invested a lot of time into developing a daily contemplative prayer practice, as well as other spiritual practices like the Examen or centering prayer. While going through the worst of this situation, it has been my daily prayer practice that has, in part, sustained me. 

When a situation is so difficult that it’s hard to find words, it’s extremely comforting to have a daily practice that doesn’t rely on words. The Examen offers an opportunity to draw my attention elsewhere, while centering prayer is a silent practice of openness to God.

These practices offer stability when everything else starts crumbling down as fellow Christians dramatically let us down. I know I’m not alone here.

I’ve read about plenty of deconversions and deconstruction over scandals involving negligent clergy, congregations, denominations, seminaries, charities, and who knows what other groups of Christians. Such experiences can bring a crisis of faith to those harmed by them.

At this point in my life, I’m no longer surprised by Christians behaving badly. Although, it’s deeply distressing to see the pain and wounds caused by these situations, I can hardly blame people for tapping out.

If they’ve been wounded by such experiences, then avoiding Christianity may feel like the safest thing they can do!

The beauty of contemplative practice for me has been the emphasis on the practice itself, the quiet seeking of God in solitude. Yes, some may teach practices and offer guidance in the particulars, but everything is ideally taught with humility and open hands, welcoming diverse experiences and outcomes.

There isn’t too much room, at least that I’ve seen, to insert a personal agenda into a practice that encourages quiet, personal intimacy with God.

Silent contemplative prayer is hardly the reaction we’d expect from folks preaching about the end times or imagined government persecution of Christians in America.

When I see Christians acting contrary to what we believe and practice to the detriment of others, I can return to the centering thought of God’s love for all. I can’t control how others act. I can’t even stop myself from feeling crushing disappointment at times. Yet, I can choose to be still and physically silent even when my racing mind is giving my prayer word or the Jesus Prayer a run for their money.

So much of what I would have considered “Christianity” is quite fragile. Some of the things we come to rely on and associate with our faith can be disrupted by someone’s or a group’s poor choices.

There is a good chance that our institutions, leaders, and congregations will let us down in some way.

The simplicity of Christian prayer, especially silent prayer before a loving God, offers stability that no one can take away from us. There surely are plenty of things to think over, even to deconstruct, but when all depends on the loving presence of God in the midst of silence, our weary minds can find rest even when the foundations appear to be crumbling beneath us, and we run out of words to say.